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Saturday, October 20, 2007

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I must tread more carefully now into my favorite work-adjacent restaurant, for I fear interaction with a girl who now works as a server there.

This girl. Oh, this girl. We used to work together at the bookstore, an experience I look back fondly on as one that forced me to interact with a more diverse spread of brain capacities than my sheltered college life afforded me. Even in this environment, however, she stood out. I can remember once overhearing a customer ask her where he could find a book titled The Fifty Most Unforgettable Actresses of the Studio Era. She promptly turned to a supervisor and asked where if the store carried a book titled The Fifty Most Unfortunate Accidents of the Studio Area. The real kicker was that she had a pretty name, which she shared with a character from Greek mythology. (As you should know, I'm a suckerfor classicalallusions inmodern settings.) For the purposes of this post, I'll call her Cazandruhh, to emphasize my belief that she represents something wonderful and Greek that falls short of the intended mark and ultimately ruins it all for me.

In any case, Cazandruhh has that magical power that the dense-and-happy-about-it often possess. It allows her to say a sentence and cause her audience to widen their eyes and cock their head in hopes that somehow changing the position of their ears might allow them to hear a note of sarcasm in the words coming out of her mouth. There was never sarcasm, though. Or even humor. Just the flat delivery of someone who doesn't really think about what she says — maybe because she doesn't care to but more likely because she can't.

She never wronged me, and I probably only spoke with her about non-work-related matters once or twice. Still, because we clearly acknowledge that we know each other but haven't got anything in common that we could talk about, I will pass by the restaurant if I see her working in order to avoid having to exchange the blandest of pleasantries known to man. (Another big minus: She doesn't know my name and I'd rather not have to remind her again.)

In essence, I'm letting myself be bossed around by a girl who couldn't care less and hasn't given the matter a first thought, much less a second one. Cazandruhh as simple as a sink plug and with a face that would make a Peanuts character look contemplative. (Or, in Spencer's terminology, she has a baked potato face and a mashed potato way of looking at things.) And yet I'm running scared from her, or at least the cloud of awkward that surrounds her and tends to suck other people in, black hole-style, even though she's the kind of employee who would blithely charge me two dollars for a large salad bar salad and bottle of Kombucha and then send me happily on my way. (She could just as easily charge me $200, I suppose, and then pound her face on the register angrily when I suggest that she forgot to carry a one.)